Monday, February 28, 2011

HP stopped by a Qualcomm roundtable discussion to demonstrate the HP Veer, Pre 3 and TouchPad that it recently announced. Mithun covered the webOS event for us but this was the first time I was able play with the devices.

Everything HP announced at its event is powered by a Qualcomm SoC. The Veer runs webOS 2.2 and uses a MSM7230 with a single Scorpion core running at 800MHz. The primary take away from my experience with the Veer is that it is really, really tiny.

The Pre 3 felt very good and snappy. It's based on the highest clocked single-core ARM based SoC on the market today: Qualcomm's MSM8x55 running at 1.4GHz. Qualcomm mentioned that this is a standard part that's available to everyone - why HP ended up being the first to launch with it is unusual.

One thing I did notice in using all of the devices is that there's still room for performance optimization. There are occasional slowdowns or dropped frames in the UI. The HP representative present indicated that there's still a great deal of work to be done on both the hardware and software side before the devices ship.

The TouchPad is by far the most interesting as webOS just begs to be used on a larger screen. The UI is smooth although again I saw some indications that HP needs to do more performance tuning. Given what we saw with the original Pre, I am concerned but we'll have to reserve judgement until final hardware hits the market. Performance optimizing can take a long time and we're still months away from a launch.

Though we still like to think of Intel first and foremost as a computer CPU company, the fact of the matter is the company is trying its hardest to expand their horizons. Among their expansion efforts are a push in to the smartphone space, and to further that Intel is at Mobile World Congress 2011 making their latest smartphone-related announcements.

The first announcement, and of course the one nearest and dearest to our hearts, is on the CPU side of things. Medfield – Intel’s next-generation Atom-based smartphone SoC is now sampling and will ship later this year. Intel still hasn’t thrown out a solid timeframe for when Medfield will ship, but Q4 is as good a guess as you’re going to get.

Medfield is the follow-up to Moorestown, Intel’s first Atom smartphone-sized SoC design that was launched only 9 months ago, and did not ship until the later half of last year. Moorestown has not had any major design wins, so while it’s out there you probably never have and never will see a Moorestown powered smartphone. As Intel’s first foray in to smartphone SoCs Moorestown had its teething issues – the principle platform was a 2 chip family, with only the Z6xx CPU + GPU + MC manufactured in-house at 45nm, while the MP20 PCH containing the camera, audio, I/O, and other supporting hardware was a 65nm product manufactured at TSMC.

The importance of Medfield in Intel’s product lineup is that it should resolve Moorestown’s teething issues. The CPU and PCH are being integrated on to a single chip, and the entire product is being built on Intel’s 32nm process, which will allow handset makers to more easily fit Medfield in to phones thanks to the reduced chip count. Architecturally Medfield is not a significant overhaul – we’re still looking at a power optimized in-order Atom – but a die shrink for the CPU and effectively two die shrinks for the PCH should go a long way towards increasing performance; the last thing we heard in this respect is that GPU performance should double, while CPU performance has not been commented on. In any case at 32nm by the end of this year, Intel will have a process advantage over its SoC competition, who will still be on 4Xnm until they transition to 28nm some time next year.

Of course Medfield is not an entire smartphone on its own. Additional supporting chips – chiefly a modem – are necessary. As you may recall, Intel picked up Infineon’s wireless solutions business back in August of 2010, giving them modem technology to go with their Atom SoCs. Down the line we’ll see Infineon-derived modems integrated in to Atom SoCs, but for now Intel is still using separate modems developed by the new Intel Mobile Communications group, which is the basis of the other major piece of news coming from Intel today.

Intel announced their first compact, low-power multi-mode LTE modem (LTE/3G/2G), the XMM 7060 platform, powered by the X-GOLD 706 baseband processor. It will begin sampling in Q3 this year, and will ship roughly a year later in H2 of 2012. The multi-mode modem is important both for Intel and for Infineon’s traditional customers. For Intel it’s something to sell alongside Medfield, while for customers after just the modem it’s going to be among the first low-power LTE modems on the market. With the additional complexity of LTE, LTE modems had to be similarly beefed up compared to their 3G brethren, which in turn can hurt battery life. Low-power modems should bring power consumption back in balance with today’s 3G modems.

On a side note, given that Intel only recently acquired Infineon's wireless group, it shouldn't come as a big surprise that the X-GOLD 706 is being fabbed out of house. Intel says it will be a 40nm product, which means it's likely being fabbed over at TSMC. Read more...

With Apple's iPad 2 just days away from being unveiled, Motorola's Xoom tablet is facing a tough competitor. Even with Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb and Verizon's network, Apple's brand could be daunting for the Xoom. And then there's the app problem and a flood of Android and webOS tablets that make it even rougher for Motorola's Xoom.

So Motorola's Xoom tablet Relevant Products/Services is out -- but the iPad Relevant Products/Services 2 is expected to be unveiled on Wednesday. Who could help but draw comparisons? Indeed, even though Apple hasn't confirmed the iPad 2 specs, even sight-unseen comparisons between the Xoom and the original iPad seem to bode well for Apple.

The Xoom won the CNET Best of Show award at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year for being "the most potentially disruptive technology." It's the first to run Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system Relevant Products/Services, and it's compatible with the upcoming Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network. But analysts said that may not be enough.

"The big advantage Apple has over the entire tablet field is its brand," said Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis. "Apple is the pioneer. They are the ones that defined this space of consumer tablets running smartphone Relevant Products/Services operating systems. That continues to set Apple apart. When people think about tablets, they first think of the iPad. Everything else is competing against it, so it's not just the Apple brand, but in some sense it's the iPad brand."

The Apple Advantage

Apple also has something else the Xoom doesn't have -- the App Store and iTunes. Although Google and Amazon.com have made efforts on the movie front -- and tablets offer a strong movie-watching experience -- Xoom customers will have some obstacles to downloading movies right onto the Xoom, at least at launch. Advantage: iPad.

"If you want to do more than web browsing and checking your e-mail Relevant Products/Services on these devices, Apple has an enormous advantage through the App Store. There are over 60,000 apps specifically written for the tablet form factor," Greengart said. "That makes a huge difference in what you can do with the device Relevant Products/Services. Google is playing catch-up. They've just released a new SDK for Honeycomb. So they are behind. Will they catch up? That's an open question."

'Choice Paralysis'

Greengart said the Xoom has a strong e-mail and browsing experience, but beyond that it can't compare to Apple's app experience. Many smartphone Android apps crash on the Xoom, he said, so consumers will have to wait until developers update their apps for the Honeycomb operating system. The Android ecosystem is strong, though, and Greengart expects these early issues to be resolved.

"It would actually be easier in some ways if it is the iPad versus the Xoom. But it's not. It's the iPad against I can't even count how many Android tablets have been launched in the last few months. It's somewhere north of 100," Greengart said. "Some consumers, when faced with LG's Honeycomb tablet and Motorola's Honeycomb tablet and HTC's Android 2.4 tablet and Hewlett-Packard's webOS tablet and four different versions of Research In Motion's PlayBook, are going to have choice paralysis and go with the iPad." Read more...

While I was scheduling my Mobile World Congress meetings I got an email request from Intel. It wanted to give me a quick tour of the latest MeeGo UI for tablets. MeeGo, as you may remember, was the combination of Intel's Moblin OS and Nokia's own efforts.

While MeeGo isn't completely abandoned by Nokia, it's looking unlikely that Nokia will be a major player in it going forward considering the fresh partnership with Microsoft.
Intel is still trucking away with MeeGo and unfortunately appears to be retaining the less-than-ideal name despite the recent shakeup with its partner (at least Moblin sounded respectable, MeeGo sounds like something you say before using the bathroom).

MeeGo is designed to be a mobile OS that can be used across a wide variety of devices. Cars, netbooks, smartphones, tablets and even TVs are supposed to be built around the totally open OS. Intel hopes that MeeGo will be the truly open alternative to Android. It's a lofty goal to say the least. Google officially introduced Android 3.0 earlier in the month and devices based on it are expected to be shipping in the next couple of months. The version of MeeGo Intel demoed for me however is a meager 1.2. While I know that comparing version numbers isn't the most scientific thing in the world, it's the easiest way for me to point out that MeeGo is no where near the maturity level of Android.

The point of today's demo was to showcase the foundation of MeeGo's tablet user experience. Intel's focus here is multitasking. What Intel wants to do away with is the concept of going back to an app launcher to do something else with your tablet. Instead, Intel believes you should be able to launch apps based on what you're doing. It's a subtle difference, but one that's best described by a screenshot.

This is the MeeGo tablet user experience. The screen is treated as a viewport into an infinitely wide and infinitely tall desktop. You scroll from left to right to view more panels, and up/down to view more information within a panel.
Each panel is grouped according to an overall function. The My Tablet panel includes your top applications as well as device settings for when you absolutely need to do something the old fashioned way. The Friends panel aggregates all of your communications between you and your friends. This could be in the form of tweets, Facebook status updates as well as emails and other messages. Everything appears in this one view. If you tap on any of the items in the view, the associated application will launch (e.g. tap an email you received from one of your friends to fire up the email app).

There are also panels for music, photos and websites.
Intel believes that launching applications to later access data with them is silly and you should instead be presented with the data you want and it should launch any necessary application for you. It's a shift from the app centric model of today's smartphone/tablet OSes to a data centric model. Intel feels that this approach will reduce the number of taps necessary to efficiently multitask, which will obviously encourage heavier usage models and ultimately require faster SoCs to run everything.

If the infinitely wide/tall viewport sounds a lot like Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 UI then you're not alone. The concept seems very similar, although it's not nearly as pretty/polished in MeeGo today. For not supporting full blown multitasking out of the box, Microsoft's WP7 UI is very efficient at moving between apps. If MeeGo can duplicate that efficiency and expand upon it, I'm interested.

Microsoft's Metro UI

The bigger issue I see with MeeGo is the huge disconnect between Intel's aspirations and the current state of affairs. If Android is the target, MeeGo needs to make a great deal of progress in a relatively short period of time. These consumer facing smartphone/tablet OSes have to be ridiculously polished, they need to make mechanical toasters look difficult to use, and MeeGo just isn't there yet.

MeeGo currently supports Swype

I like the concept. A truly open OS that allows for infinite customization and supports everything from smartphones and tablets to PCs and TVs. We need unification. The last thing I want is to have a HP tablet that can't run the same apps as my iOS smartphone and my Google TV. Unfortunately for Intel I feel like the deck is stacked against it on this. Intel does an amazing job executing on its microprocessor designs, but its extra curricular activities are rarely met with a similar amount of success.

After CES 2011, we had written about A.C.Ryan trying to get into the US market with their new product lineup. One of the products we covered in the write up was the second generation PlayOn!HD2, an updated version of their flagship product from last year.

While the first generation product was based on the Realtek 1073DD chipset, the second generation is based on the Realtek 1185DD.

In order to provide A.C.Ryan with feedback prior to the units reaching the hands of the consumers, we opted to go in for a prototype review unit. A.C.Ryan sent us their top configuration, the ACR-PV73700-2TB. This model has a 2 TB Samsung hard drive bundled with the base unit, and will have a suggested retail price of $289 when it launches later this month.

A.C.Ryan warned us that the unit we were receiving was a prototype and even though the hardware was final, the firmware bundled with the unit was not. We weren't expecting the streamer to work wonder right off the box, but that didn't prevent us from connecting the unit to our streamer test bed.

One of the main concerns with the PlayOn!HD2 platform's specifications was the absence of any mention of DTS-HD audio downmix or bitstreaming. Also, we were suspicious of the claimed BD-ISO playback.

Right after hooking up the box, I tried to playback some MKV and M2TS files with DTS-HD MA audio. Bitstreaming of the HD audio worked without a hitch! Like many other media streamers, there is no official support for DTS-HD audio. However, that doesn't prevent the streamer from handling it within the constraints placed by the user's setup and the licensing agreements in place. In this context, the WDTV lineup is the odd one out, refusing to support DTS-HD bitstreaming. Other licensees feel that a license is necessary only for decode and downmix of the HD audio and not for bitstreaming. We feel this is correct, since the end user has already paid the licensing fees for the decoding of DTS-HD audio when purchasing the AV receiver.

Anyway, getting back to the PlayOn!HD2, we tried to look into the claimed BD-ISO support. While both BD-ISOs and folder structures played the movie, the support is still in the form of BD-Lite, i.e, A.C.Ryan's own menu instead of the BD-J enabled one. There are still some tweaks necessary for titles with branched structures, and other areas where the firmware could use some improvement. We have informed A.C.Ryan of the same. A detailed review of the functionality enabled by the firmware will come later.

However, being given an exclusive, we couldn't resist publishing a overview of the hardware platform right away. First, we will have a look at the unboxing experience, following which we will cover the internal hardware platform in detail. Read more...

A free plug-in adds collaboration to older versions of Microsoft Office through Google Cloud Connect for Office. Office 2010 already offers collaboration, but Google Cloud Connect does not work with Microsoft Office for Mac, which doesn't have open APIs. Synced Office files are given a URL and backed up for desktop and mobile access.

Google is bringing the cloud Relevant Products/Services to office productivity Relevant Products/Services tools -- Microsoft Relevant Products/Services's Office tools, that is. On Thursday, the search giant announced that it's releasing Google Cloud Connect for Office, which was initially shown as a preview last fall.

The company said that, with a free plug-in, Cloud Connect for Office "brings collaborative multi-person editing to the family Microsoft Office experience." It enables users to share, backup Relevant Products/Services and simultaneously edit Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents.

'Smart Synchronization'

No SharePoint deployment is required, and Connect supports Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 on Windows PCs. Office 2010 offers collaboration, but Google Connect gives that capability to earlier releases of the popular productivity suite. Google noted that, "due to the lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac," Connect is not currently available for that platform.

Office files are synced via the cloud and given a unique URL. Once they are synced, files are automatically backed up. Files can be worked on from connected mobile devices as well as desktop Relevant Products/Services or laptop Relevant Products/Services computers.

When documents are shared, participants get a notification e-mail Relevant Products/Services. Shared documents get downloaded from the cloud and edited in the app normally. When working offline, changes are synced to all participants the next time they log in. If two or more participants edit the same section simultaneously, Cloud Connect for Office provides paths for choosing which edits to keep.

Editing is simultaneous, with no document or paragraph locking while one person is working. Each Office file has a URL that is shared in Google Docs, and Docs retains a version history. Documents can be edited offline, and can be brought up to speed with online docs via "smart synchronization."

DocVerse Technology

A potentially big advantage of the plug-in approach is that, instead of importing and exporting Office docs to Google Docs, which can result in formatting or other issues, the plug-in enables users to stay within Office.

While the plug-in is free, there's a cost of $50 per user per year for the Connect service, plus the user must have the necessary Office license. There's also a new Appsperience program which offers a 90-day trial period with Google Apps and support. Google Apps includes Cloud Connect for Office, Google Spreadsheets, Google Sites, Google Docs, Google Presentations, and Google Forms.

Prices for Appsperience range from $7,000 for 50 to 500 users, to $15,000 for more than 500 users. The offer includes user training, change management assistance, a week of tech Relevant Products/Services support, and a dashboard to analyze return on investment from the collaboration.

The technology behind Connect was obtained as part of Google's acquisition of DocVerse in March 2009. When Google bought DocVerse, Group Product Manager Jonathan Rochelle wrote on the Office Google Enterprise Blog that "the future of productivity applications is in the cloud." He acknowledged that "many people are still accustomed to desktop software," so Google's approach makes it easier to "interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office." Read more...

Saturday, February 26, 2011

In a not completely unexpected move Samsung Mobile announced that it would be working with NVIDIA on two different projects. First and foremost is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. This 10.1" Honeycomb tablet uses NVIDIA's Tegra 2 SoC (just like LG's Optimus Pad and Motorola's Xoom). The big news isn't the fact that it's a 10-inch Android tablet, but that it's not using a Samsung SoC.
As the reference platform for Honeycomb, NVIDIA's Tegra 2 makes a lot of sense for Samsung. The fact that Samsung went from reference platform for Gingerbread to having to partner with NVIDIA on Honeycomb doesn't bode very well for its SoC team.

I had the opportunity to play around with the Galaxy Tab 10.1 after Samsung's press conference. If you've ever used a Galaxy S phone like the Fascinate you'll know that it feels: 1) plasticky, 2) light and 3) just a little cheap. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is like a giant Fascinate, but it doesn't feel all that cheap to me - just light.

The weight is comfortable, especially coming from an iPad. The OS is responsive however I get the impression that Honeycomb is still a bit early. Despite GPU acceleration everywhere I noticed some choppy scrolling and laggy transitions. The unit I was playing with even managed to reboot in the middle of me messing with the camera. These are all issues you'd expect from pre-release software so I'm not too concerned.
I think it's still too early to tell how well these Honeycomb tablets will do in the market. I need to see final software to get a better idea. Soon enough I hope...

The Galaxy S II

Despite turning to NVIDIA for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (and an unannounced future Samsung superphone), Samsung did introduce the Galaxy S II based on an unnamed SoC (the assumption is that it's Samsung's own Orion SoC).
The Galaxy S II features a 4.3" Super AMOLED Plus display (full stripe matrix, not PenTile) with what appears to be a 800 x 480 resolution. The phone measures only 8.49mm thick and weighs a meager 116g. That's 85% the thickness and 91% of the weight of a Samsung Fascinate.

Inside the Galaxy S II is a dual-core (Cortex A9) SoC running at 1GHz. A 4-core GPU (Update: we listed a 4-core PowerVR SGX 544 earlier, which is incorrect) and a HSPA+ 21Mbps modem. Powering all of this is a 1650mAh battery, a 10% increase in battery capacity vs. the Samsung Fascinate.
The Galaxy S II supports NFC, 1080p30 recording and playback and features a 8MP rear facing camera with LED flash. On the front you've got a 2MP camera. WiFi Direct is also supported, which will be used to enable wireless syncing to your desktop over WiFi.
Samsung includes the latest version of its TouchWiz UI (4.0), which includes an entire suite of remote location and theft recovery tools. You can remotely locate your phone, lock it and of course track it all on the web. You can also have your phone SMS you if someone swaps out the SIM as well as remotely monitor what calls are made with the phone.
Rounding off the list of supported features are a 3-axis gyroscope and accelerometer. Samsung also boasts hardware encryption on the Galaxy S II but it wasn't clear in what sense (perhaps real time NAND encryption?).

I spent some time with the Galaxy S II after Samsung's press conference and I can confirm that it is both very thin and very fast. The Galaxy S II will launch with Gingerbread and as a result scrolling through apps is smoother than even on the Tegra 2 based Atrix 4G.

Overall the Galaxy S II felt like a slightly faster, slightly smoother Atrix 4G. We'll have to get one in house to really pit it up against NVIDIA's flagship. The Gingerbread advantage is undeniable though.

Last year Qualcomm told us about the MSM8960, its next-generation Snapdragon SoC based on a brand new microprocessor architecture. Today Qualcomm announced some more details on the architecture behind the MSM8960 as well as a couple of new SoCs based on that architecture. The CPU architecture is codenamed Krait. I'll be meeting with Qualcomm later today to talk about architectural details in greater depth as today's release has little information other than some general performance numbers.
Krait, like Scorpion before it, is a ground-up CPU design by Qualcomm. The architecture will debut at 28nm and run at speeds of up to 2.5GHz. This is compared to the ~2GHz target frequency for high end Cortex A15 devices. Again we know nothing about the architecture or pipeline of Krait so it's impossible to draw any conclusions based on this information alone.

Qualcomm announced that Krait is up to 150% faster than "currently available ARM-based CPU cores". Again this could mean anything as ARM11, Cortex A8 and Cortex A9 cores are all "currently available".

The Krait cores will be integrated into SoCs in single, dual and quad-core configurations.

First let me explain Qualcomm's nomenclature. There are three prefixes you need to be familiar with: QSD, MSM and APQ. QSD was the original prefix applied to Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs, it has since been retired and replaced with MSM. Going forward you won't see any more QSD products, they'll all be called MSM-something (e.g. MSM8960). The QSD prefix was a remnant of the original marketing strategy behind Snapdragon.

If you paid attention to HP's webOS announcements you'll know that the new TouchPad uses a new Qualcomm SoC - the APQ8660. The APQ prefix stands for Application Processor Qualcomm and it refers to an SoC that does not have an integrated modem. The MSM line all have integrated Qualcomm modems making them a single chip solution for those customers who want the added integration.

With that out of the way let's get to what's being announced today.

Krait will debut in three configurations: a single-core MSM8930, dual-core MSM8960 and quad-core APQ8064.

The MSM8960 will be available first, sampling in Q2 2011 and likely in devices a year or so later. The sampling schedule seems a bit aggressive given that it's 28nm but that's what Qualcomm is saying.
The MSM8960 integrates a multi-mode 3G/LTE modem, which should make this a very attractive SoC for future high end smartphones. The SoC adds a dual-channel LPDDR2 memory controller and uses an Adreno 225 GPU. Qualcomm states that the 225 is eight times the speed of the original Adreno 200. Given that the Adreno 205 was 2x the 200, that would make the Adreno 225 4x the performance of the fastest Adreno GPUs we have today.

Both the single-core MSM8930 and the quad-core APQ8064 will be sampling in early 2012. The MSM8930 also integrates a 3G/LTE modem but it adds an Adreno 305 GPU. The 305 is supposed to be six times the performance of the original 200. I expect the MSM8930 to be used in upper mainstream smartphones, while the MSM8960 will be more of a high end smartphone SoC.

As an APQ, the quad-core 8064 has no integrated modem but it does have four Krait cores (capable of running at asynchronous clock speeds so core 0 could run at a different frequency than core 3 depending on load). This sounds a lot like a tablet SoC.

The APQ8064 integrates an Adreno 320 GPU, which Qualcomm says offers performance similar to today's gaming consoles. The 320 features four GPU cores. The Adreno 320 is listed as being 15x the performance of the original Adreno 200.
Feeding the CPU cores is LPDDR2 memory interface, although standard DDR3 can also be used. The 8064 also has a PCIe interface and support for up to a 20MP camera.

These Krait based SoCs will go up against ARM Cortex A15 based solutions (e.g. TI's OMAP 5). Intel's Medfield (32nm Atom) SoC will also be a competitor here. Read more...

IPv6 has been introduced, allowing a previously impossible variety of Internet addresses to be used now that the supply of useable addresses governed by the IPv4 standard has been exhausted. But what does this change mean for everyday surfers? Most computers will be able to process the new standard, but an IPv6-capable OS is needed.

Many web surfers don't know it, but the introduction of new Internet address standards might change the way they get online.

Since the supply Relevant Products/Services of useable addresses governed by the IPv4 standard (Internet protocol, version 4) has been exhausted, IPv6 has now been introduced. This will allow a previously impossible variety of addresses, says Christoph Meinel, a professor at Germany's Hasso Plattner Institute.

But what does this change mean for everyday surfers? Here's an overview.

Why Are IP Addresses Necessary?

In order for Internet-capable devices to share information, they need a unique machine-readable address. These addresses are assigned based on a standard of Internet protocols.

But, since humans have a hard time remembering these strings of numbers, Web sites are also labeled with domain names, like www.google.com. When these addresses are typed into browsers, special servers translate them into IP addresses for the benefit of the computers.

What Is the Difference Between IPv4 and IPv6?

Until now, IP addresses have been assigned in blocks of four numbers with up to three numerals each: 217.79.215.248, for example. The new IPv6 standard won't convert the numbers into the decimal system Relevant Products/Services, rather a hexadecimal system, recognized by its combination of numbers and letters.

The new standard can be recognized by its eight blocks, separated by colons -- 2001:db8:0:0:0:0:1428:57ab, for example.

Will My Computer Be Able To Process the New Standard?

In most cases, yes. But an IPv6-capable operating system is a prerequisite. Those can be found in any Windows system post Vista. There are ways to install the functionality into Windows XP systems. Mac systems starting at 10.2 and Linux, in general, can support IPv6.

Will My DSL Access Support the New Standard?

In most cases, no. Contemporary routers, like the ones provided by telecommunications companies when DSL packages are ordered, are still set for the old IPv4 standard. In some cases, IPv6 can be added with a firmware update. When purchasing a new router, make sure it supports IPv6.

Should I Anticipate Problems During the Transition to the New Standard?

Generally, no. Internet use shouldn't be affected after the switch -- at least that's what providers are promising. Those providers have modified their network so that data Relevant Products/Services packets reach all users whether they are using IPv4 or IPv6 standards, a method called dual-stack application. Alternatively, software solutions, like those based on tunnel technology, can be used. Read more...